Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program – The fertile ground of conspiracy theories

Last week I talked a little about my view of conspiracy theories.   This week we'll discuss what an amazing gift these theories are to story tellers.  Even if you don't base an entire story on them, dropping little hooks does wonders.

For today I just want to share a few examples of successfully using conspiracy theories to enhance or build stories:

Independence Day – I love the way the writers of Independence Day used the long standing conspiracy theories of Area 51 and an alien crash in Roswell, New Mexico to provide humans with a way to survive an alien invasion.  In fact, I could see the entire movie premise stemming from a creative writer studying these conspiracy theories.

Transformers - Rise of the Fallen – This movie makes fantastic use of the faked moon landing conspiracy theory.  They don’t say the landing was a fake.  They take what is odd and turn it into a key point of the story, namely the trip was to explore an alien crash on the moon.

Vantage Point - This starts off as a straight assassination thriller and gradually plays into conspiracy theories that the US perpetrates horrible events to keep us at war.  This isn't that far removed from 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Angels and Demons – This book was almost entirely based on the Illuminati conspiracy theory and tied to the Catholic Church.'s historical assault on science.  I actually think this one was better than the DaVinci Code. Oh, and read the book, as always, it is much better than the movie.

There have been too many movies to name that are explicitly about a single conspiracy theory e.g. JFK or The Manchurian Candidate.  The list goes on and on.  When conspiracy is couched as fiction we love it.

If you are going to set any adventure, fantasy, sci-fi, or thriller in modern times, the inclusion of at least one conspiracy theory makes the story better.  It ties the fictional world to the real world in a non-threatening way.    It lets the story fit in the reader's current world but it's a part of their world that they can ignore when they put down the book.  You get a richer, more entertaining story.
 
Tomorrow I’m going to talk about how you can prime the pump of your imagination by combining conspiracy theories.  If you’re looking for story ideas tomorrow should give you lots of fuel.

In the meantime, I'd be interested to hear which is your favorite conspiracy enhanced/inspired story.